


Guide You Home

by iamthemagicks



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-06
Updated: 2012-02-06
Packaged: 2017-10-30 17:31:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamthemagicks/pseuds/iamthemagicks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas wakes up alone and naked in a cemetery and all he knows is, he has to make it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This has (sadly) become an AU of season seven, starting after 7.02. Bobby is alive and well (and will damn well stay that way).

He wakes up in the middle of a cemetery. Alone, naked. Cold. His body shivers and shakes like it never has; only he doesn’t really know it never has. But somehow it doesn’t feel right that he’s shaking. That he feels numb and cold, that he’s feeling anything at all. Grass sticks in his mouth and all he can smell is dirt and that it’s about to rain.  
Even though it’s cloudy and gray, it’s far too bright. He sits up and looks around at the field of tombstones, and wonders if one of them is his. On wobbly legs he walks over the dried grass towards the gates. On the other side he looks up and over the arch it reads STULL CEMETERY. He doesn’t know his name, but he can read, so that’s got to be something.

The grass is sharp against his bare feet and he just walks. Covered in dirt and blood, he walks as it starts to rain. He doesn’t know where he’s going, or who he should be looking for, but he walks in one direction until he finds a road, and then follows the side of that. 

The cars that pass him are harsh; the sound, the yellow lights. Gravel cuts the sole of his feet, his toes, and rain washes away the dirt, but he feels mucky, unclean and he shouldn’t be here on this Earth. But he keeps walking. He KNOWS that if he keeps walking going in this direction, he’ll eventually end up in South Dakota. In Sioux Falls at a salvage yard.

People honk at him and he reaches to cover his ears because it’s too loud. But he keeps walking, dodging a bottle someone actually throws at him and he wonders briefly what was the point in saving this whole damn planet if people continued to act like that towards their fellow man. 

After an hour, and his feet are cut raw and he can’t see that far in front of him because it’s raining so hard, a car dose slow down, with blinking blue lights. He recognizes this as a police car. Suddenly the idea of walking around naked seems pretty bad, but he didn’t know what else to do. 

The officer steps out of the car, a woman, dressed in blue, with a poncho and a hat covered in plastic. “Excuse me, sir?” she yells. Her hand is at her side arm. “What do you think you’re doing?”

He turns to face her and stops all his movements, but shifts his hands to cover his front. “I…” he’s stunned to find he has a voice. He never thought to try. He didn’t think to do anything besides walk. “I’m trying to get somewhere.”

She kind of laughs. “By hitch-hiking?”

“I’m not doing that,” he explains. “I’m…walking.”

She approaches him, but keeps her hand on her gun. “Naked?”

He glances around, then back at her. The rain gets in his eyes and his mouth. He sputters when he speaks. “I don’t have any clothes.” He sounds rather pathetic. “I’m sorry, I’ll keep going. Maybe a little further away from the road.”

Her hand moves from her weapon and she kind of laughs. “Oh I don’t think so, darling. Come on, let’s take you to the station.” She gestures an open arm, but he steps back a bit, frightened. “It’s okay,” she assures. “I’m not gonna hurt you. We just need to get you out of the rain.”

So he goes with her, into the back of the squad car. She has kind eyes and a small smile. It makes him feel warm, this outreach of kindness and he is in fact glad, that he saved this planet, on several occasions. With three other men, but he can’t recall their faces.

~

At the police station the officer, Lois Jones, gives him some clothes to wear. They’re loose fitting, a pair of tattered jeans and a t-shirt that’s two sizes too big. They don’t have shoes though, or socks for him. She says she’s sorry, but hopes the second-hand attire is okay.

“It’s fine,” he tells her. She gives him a Styrofoam cup of coffee, that for a while he just holds between his hands. He sits on a wooden chair on the other side of her desk.

“All right,” she says, taking off the hat. Her hair is long and red, tied back with a black ribbon. “What’s your name?”

He looks down into the coffee like the answer will be there. But all that stares up at him is the brown liquid, some steam and a few bubbles. The coffee is black. No cream or sugar. Someone he knows drinks it like this. Two people. 

“I don’t know,” he answers. “I…I woke up in the cemetery.”

“You said you were heading somewhere. Do you know?”

“Sioux Falls, South Dakota.”

Her eyes widen. “That’s a long way to walk.”

He shrugs. “I had no way else to get there.”

The pencil she taps against her desk pounds with the rhythm of his heart. A gentle throb, warm and continuous. “Well,” starts Lois. “Do you know who you were going to see?”

He searches his blank mind for a name. For anything other than trivial facts like the sky is blue and grass is green. That he’s sitting in a police station and coffee is hot. But an image flashes, that salvage yard, a name on the sign. Singer Salvage. 

“Singer Salvage,” he answers. “That’s where I’m trying to go.” He has friends there, people who care about him, that know him. 

Lois’ smile grows again and she types some stuff into the computer. Another officer walks by and they chat. But he keeps looking into his cup. He’s not sure exactly what he’s looking for, what he expects to look back at him. His feet hurt and his stomach growls. 

Lois picks up the phone. He watches her. “Hello, this is Officer Lois Jones from Lawrence Police Department, is this Singer Salvage? Good, I have a gentleman here who’s been trying to walk his way to you.” She nods as the man on the other end speaks. “Yes. Tall and thin. Dark hair and blue eyes. Has some weird scars on his chest. Symbols.”

He touches his chest, feeling the welted pink marks through the fabric. At some point, these marks were carved into his chest. He remembers the sharp pain of the box-cutter, the look of determination from Dean as he carved to his instruction.

Dean. The name rings in his ears. Not his name, but someone he trusts. “Dean,” he says. “Is Dean there?”

Lois looks at him oddly with the phone pressed to her ear. “Yes,” she answers. “Yes. He’ll be here. And is there a Dean with you?” Another pause. “All right I’ll tell him. Thank you, Mr. Singer.” She hangs up. “Well, they certainly seem happy to hear about you.”

He tilts his head. “Really?”

She nods. “Oh yeah. Asked me to verify your looks about five times. And my wayward friend,” she says. “Your name is Cas.”

~

Lois tells Cas that Bobby Singer will be here to pick him up in seven hours. She’ll stay with him until Bobby arrives. She gets him a second cup of coffee which he’s decided he likes with four sugars and two creams. Cas tries to remember Dean, the face, what he means. But all Cas can see are those unsteady hands cutting into his pale flesh.  
“So,” she starts. “You really don’t remember how you got there?”

He shakes his head. 

“Weren’t drinking or anything?”

“No.” The last time he drank, he downed a whole liquor store. He’s not sure how that’s possible. He sips his coffee, eats some of the chips that she bought for him. “Thank you,” he says. He’s aware that this is unusually kind, even for a police officer. That were he perhaps in a bigger city, or a different cop who had a bad day found him, he would have been stuck in one of the cells until he was retrieved, with nothing else but a blanket over his shoulders to hide his nakedness. 

She rubs on a cross that hangs on a gold chain around her neck. “I couldn’t just leave you out there alone, now could I?” She moves her chair a bit to sit at a better angle at the desk. “I have some paper work to do anyway. Do you mind some music?” He shakes his head and she turns on the radio. “Hope you don’t mind Led Zeppelin.”

~

Cas started to doze at his chair, and he went to sleep on a bench in the waiting area. He dreams of falling, of burning feathers and the taste of pond water. Black liquid over his face and down his throat. Everything in him aches, he feels everything. Things he knows he’s never felt before. An ache in his shoulder and hip, the throbbing of his feet. His body is new, but old. 

He wakes when the sun shines bright-white across his face and the door to the station opens. Then, silhouetted, he sees a man that he’s known for quite some time. With a hat on his head, a beard on his face. Dressed in flannel and jeans. His face drops, pales, his mouth open and his eyes wide.

Cas sits up, pulling at the drooping t-shirt. 

Lois stands from her desk and walks across the room. “You must be Mr. Singer,” she says, offering her hand. “I’m Officer Jones.”

“Right,” Bobby says, shaking her hand, but not taking his eyes off Cas. “You say you just found him walking around?”

“On the interstate.” She nods.

“He in trouble?”

“No. Not at all. Just wanted to make sure he got home okay.”

The smile Bobby gives is forced, Cas knows this. “Well,” he says. “Come on, boy.”

He understands this as a gentle order. Cas stands and thanks Lois again, then crosses the room and follows Bobby out the door and into the bright outside. He shields his eyes a moment. 

“You okay?” Bobby asks.

“Yes.” But he doesn’t move. He just stands, feeling the sun’s warmth. When he moves his arms, Bobby is standing very close. His wide eyes watered, but looking on, incredulously. 

“You really you?”

He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

And then Bobby Singer does something that Cas knows he doesn’t normally do. There’s an embrace, warm and strong and Cas shakes again, but starts to feel whole. “We really missed you, Cas,” he mutters.

Cas holds back and whispers, “Where’s Dean?”


	2. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cas wakes up alone and naked in a cemetery and all he knows is, he has to make it to Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

On the car ride, Cas starts to remember. A little bit at a time, like waking up from a deep sleep, that he knows he’s never had. Bobby Singer is a great man. He lives in grief for his wife Karen, killed twenty years ago, for his friend Rufus. For a woman named Ellen who he thinks he could of married, her daughter. For a family, boys that he considers his own. Dean and Sam. Cas knows that he knows them, but still can’t quite place their faces. 

“So uh,” Bobby starts as they pull out of Lawrence, Kansas. Cas watches the welcome sign go by. “I brought you some clothes. Didn’t know what state you were gonna be in.” He hands Cas a plastic bag.   
Cas shifts through it. A pair of jeans with bleach stains on them, a black t-shirt with a rainbow triangle in the middle and PINK FLOYD written in purple. He takes out the shirt and unfurls it holding it out in front of him. It’s Dean’s, because he knows that Sam doesn’t care for the older music and Dean had told Cas about listening to “Dark Side of the Moon” while watching the Wizard of Oz.

He takes off the white t-shirt that’s too big for him and drops it on the floor of the car. Then slips on Dean’s shirt. It’s loose too around his thin frame. But it smells like Dean and old books. He pulls on the socks too that give small comfort to his sore feet, then a pair of old sneakers that fit just perfectly. He places the bag down by his feet. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” Bobby answers. The car makes a rattling sound and he hits the dash, giving Cas a small jolt. “You okay?” Bobby notices.

“I’m fine.” Cas looks back out the window. It’s gotten cloudy again. He doesn’t like being in cars. They’re confining and slow. He used to be able to blink and be where he wanted. Wind through his wings and through his hair. And he starts to remember his existence. Well not all at once. He just sees one or two little things to tell him that he’s old. He’s very, very old. Gabriel, his brother, one of his many brothers, warns him not to step on a fish that’s crawling out of the water.

He sees things through eyes that aren’t quite his. There’s a family, a wife with worried eyes, a daughter with golden hair, that he cries for. Stabbings, being shot. He exorcised demons. 

Normally, he believes, one would be terrified of these memories, but he’s not. ”Bobby?” he asks quietly, still staring out the window.

“What?” Bobby isn’t a soft man.

“I’m…I’m not an angel anymore, am I?”

But he is kind. “I don’t think so.”

*

They stop once for food at a tiny diner in Nebraska. Bobby just gets coffee, but Cas is famished, though he doesn’t announce that. He just asks for a plate of fries and water, which he gobbles down faster than Bobby can get a second refill on his coffee.

“When was the last time you ate?” Bobby asks.

Cas shrugs. “I had crackers last night.”

“Well, there’s plenty of food at the house.”

“You’ll let me stay with you?” he asks, sounding a little more pathetic than he means.

Bobby’s eyes roll in a gesture that Cas registers as being familiar. “Where else are you gonna stay? I let those two idjits stay with me whenever they want don’t I?” He stiffens himself and drinks his coffee, but Bobby loves those boys, and maybe, Cas allows himself to think, loves him too. 

Cas picks at his fries. “Will they be there?” he asks. “Sam and Dean?”

Bobby pauses. “Yeah. They’re stayin’ for a rest. Gotta tell you, they’re gonna be real happy to see you.”

“They will?”

“Of course.”

“And Sam…” Cas recalls. “Is he doing okay?”

Bobby’s shoulders tighten and he shrugs. “Better.”

Sam wasn’t doing well last Cas remembers. He’d been to Hell. 

“Well.” Bobby checks his watch. “We still got some road to put behind us. Let’s go.”

*

Cas sleeps again, pressed his face against the window, using the old shirt as a pillow. But he dreams, something he knows he didn’t do as an angel, because angels don’t sleep. The dream is…odd. More memories he figures. Again he’s falling. There are voices all around him screaming, claws grabbing at his skin. 

He wakes up with another jolt.

“Whoa, you okay?” Bobby asks, reaching over to touch his knee.

Cas looks around. He’s in the car, safe. Bobby is there and it’s the car. No water, no one else besides the two of them. “Where are we?”

Bobby puts the car in park. “Home sweet home.” 

Cas steps out of the car at the same time Bobby does. The property is familiar, but different. The house is old and new at the same time, just like him. But junk cars sprawl over the property, a sign hangs loose by the garage with SINGER SALVAGE painted in dark blue. “What happened?”

“You’re old roommates blew my house half-way to Kingdome Come. Been rebuilding it over the last year.”

A year. Where ever he had been, he’s been there a year. And it’s his fault that Bobby’s house looks a little closer to condemned than usual. “I’m sorry,” Cas says, looking down at the gravel under his sneakers. 

Bobby shakes his head. “No sense in worry about it now. Come on inside, let’s get you some more food. You like you’re gonna keel over any second.”  
Cas nods and follows. He doesn’t know what he looks like. He caught a brief glimpse from the rearview mirror of Bobby’s car, but tried his best NOT to look. Into eyes that he wasn’t born with, a face that should have stayed gone and dead. The wind picks up and Cas feels it down to his bones. On the one hand, he likes it. On the other, it just reminds him of how human he is. 

He follows Bobby up the front porch to the door. All of it is new, still smells of fresh pine and paint. Inside is different. All the books, a great fewer than Cas remembers, are stacked by a couch bought at the Goodwill. The kitchen is the same and Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder to shove him down to sit at the table. 

“Where’s—”

“First,” Bobby says, handing Cas a metal flask. “Drink.”

Holy water. Cas is being given a standard test to make sure he’s not a demon, or a shapeshifter. Something that will kill them all in their sleep. Without complaint, Cas drinks the water, he sits still for a silver knife to be cut across his forearm. He winces in pain, but there’s no burning, no wail or growling. 

“Sorry about that,” Bobby says, putting a mat of gauze over Cas’ bleeding arm. “Standard issue.”

“Yes.” He puts pressure on his wound.

“So, where’d you come from?”

Cas looks up shyly while still holding to his arm. “I woke up at Stull Cemetery,” he says. “And I started walking.”

“Naked?”

He shrugs, then looks away at his palms. 

“What do you remember?”

“Nothing. Some things. I…it’s coming back, a little at a time. I did…bad things,” he combs his mind for it. He hurt Sam, he hurt Dean. He hurt a lot of people. And he feels bad for it all. But wasn’t it supposed to mean something? Wasn’t it for something? 

Bobby eases his shoulders back and shrugs while taking a sip from a mug that is filled with fresh coffee and maybe a shot of whiskey if Cas remembers correctly. “Afraid so.”

“I’m sorry,” Cas tells him. “I didn’t…” his heart, his newly beating heart, begins pumping quickly, batting against his ribcage. A panic rises in his throat, all his joints feel locked. “I just wanted it to stop, I had to stop it.” His eyes grow wide and wet, he blinks so fast that he thinks he may go blind. 

Bobby waves his hand dismissively. He’s more gentle and candid with Cas than he would be if there were others around. While kind and loving, Bobby is also reserved. Stays tough around the edges. But this is something they all do, Cas remembers. 

He clears his throat. “Don’t worry about it, boy. We just gotta figure out who or what brought you back and if they’re gonna come lookin’ for you.” He gets up and heads to the den that Cas sees perfectly from where he sits. It’s also worse for the ware. The wall paper is different, but surprisingly that desk is still there, a chair that always squeaks when the wheels move is still there.   
The windows are new, bright glinting glass, new dark green curtains and sleek hard-wood floors.  
Cas kicks his feet under the table and taps his fingers. “What should I do?” he asks. 

“Can you read?”

“Of course I can read.” Cas stands and walks into the den. 

Bobby hands him a book. Heavy and old, musted yellow pages. “Get started.”

*

But Cas doesn’t end up reading long. The text blurs together and the house is just so warm, and the couch is so soft, that Cas finds himself sinking into the cushions and leaning on the arm, drifting off to sleep. 

Sleep is of little comfort though, with the dreams and memories. His body isn’t his, but it is now. His father is mad at him, God is mad at him and he deserves it. Sam is his friend. Cas has been to Hell twice. The first time to raise the righteous man, second to save the righteous man’s brother. His wings were singed both times, feathers brittle and frail at the end. But then he remembers, he doesn’t have wings anymore.

When he does wake up, it’s to the sound of a slamming door, of raised voices in the kitchen that are trying to be quiet. There’s a thin blanket over him. Cas sits up and peeks and sees the three of them, Bobby, Sam, and Dean, standing. Dean with his back to Cas, Bobby and Sam he can see.

Sam. Sam Winchester. Lucifer’s one true vessel. The man who gave up everything to save the world. Well, both of the Winchesters have done that, numerous times. And all Sam ever wanted was to be normal. To have a stable family. 

When Cas stands, Sam sees him and his expression changes vastly. He moves across the room in long, quick strides. 

“Cas!” Sam says before actually embracing him, tight. Sam’s frame is large and encasing. Cas doesn’t deserve this type of affection, not after what he did. He broke the wall. A wall that was supposed to protect Sam from his memories of Hell. And Cas broke it for his own needs. He remembers this now. Remembers the look of disgust and anger from Dean when he did it.

Sam squeezes a bit tight for Cas’ liking, feeling it down to his now frail ribs.

“Sam,” he says back into Sam’s shoulder; he’s much taller.

Sam lets go and steps back a second and looks him over. In awe, in shock. Like there should be something wrong with him. Sam looks well. He’s not twitching, he’s smiling. 

Cas tries to smile back, but it feels false. He looks past Sam’s shoulder and finally sees Dean. Dean who was his friend, who taught him everything about being human. His heart flutters, his face flushes.   
But Dean just looks at him for a second, then grabs a rag from the table. “I’ll be out back,” he says. He walks out the back door with a slam. 

Sam scratches the back of his head. “Don’t worry about him,” Sam says.

But Cas does worry. The ache in his chest grows ten-fold, and he just wants to walk back to the desolate cemetery he woke up in.


End file.
